'Divine' intervention protects Park Hill mansion

Yonkers' Park Hill landmark has been magnificently restored

Mar. 1, 2013

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The house features some wonderful original architectural details, like the curved stained-glass windows and built-in seating in the first-floor music room. All of the public rooms are on the first floor, with the eight bedrooms on the second and third floors. / Photos by Mark Vergari/The Journal News

FATHER DIVINE

Along with the grand houses in Yonkers and New Rochelle, Father Divine and his Peace Mission movement owned a 70-acre riverfront parcel next to Lyndhurst in Tarrytown from 1941 to 1986. At his height, he was also one of the biggest landlords in Harlem. The controversial religious leader of the 1930s and ’40s was known as a charlatan and hustler to many —longtime Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Sr. called him “the colossal farce of the 20th century” — and a saintly visionary with God-like powers to his tens of thousands of African-American followers. Father Divine’s message was a mixture of Christianity, cultism and and a self-help ideology of positive thinking. He believed in abstinence, education, hard work and self reliance. He gave away massive amounts of food to feed the hungry in the Great Depression, while also amassing tons of money from his hard-working followers. The itinerant preacher with the golden voice and charismatic style was an early civil rights advocate who proclaimed that women were the equals of men. Not much is known about his early life, but he was probably born near Savannah, Ga., around 1880 and named George Baker. In the 1940s, he moved his operation to Philadelphia and died there in 1965.

Sale pending

The eight-bedroom house at 369 Park Hill Ave. in Yonkers, which has been on the market for $1.1 million, is currently in contract. Jane McAfee of Houlihan Lawrence is the listing agent. For more information, visit her website at www. JaneMcAfee.com.

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Robert Facey bought the Father Divine house from Mother Divine, the preacher’s widow, 11 years ago. After much work on the house, polishing, restoring, repairing and refurbishing, Facey put the home on the market.

After eight months without much serious interest, Facey at last has a buyer — a very enthusiastic couple who is moving up from the Upper West Side. In fact, Art Perlman and his wife, Claire Gutekunst, weren’t even house hunting. “We actually never considered ever moving out of the city,” he says. “I would just glance for fun at real estate sites — it’s just a hobby of mine.”

“We were intrigued by the Park Hill area of Yonkers,” Perlman says. “And there was this house. It was the house that made us decide to move — to have such a beautiful house with 2.7 acres within a half mile of New York City.”

“We’re city people and we want to stay in touch with the city and still be a part of it,” he adds. “Jane (McAfee of Houlihan Lawrence) showed us around Park Hill and that made it so much better. We bought the house largely because of Park Hill.”

Park Hill, a historic neighborhood known for its large and gracious one-family homes, is considered one of the country’s first planned suburbs. It’s a close-knit community with many artists, musicians and writers.

The Father Divine House was built in 1898 for the Louis G. Fisher family. Alarico Valle, a contractor, bought the house for $100,000 in 1922. Then in 1939, when his fashionable Park Hill neighbors thwarted his plans to build apartments, he sold it to the Harlem evangelist.

Through his secretary, John DeVoute — Father Divine never owned anything in his own name — he established the house as one of his “heavens” on earth.

That same year, Father Divine and his church bought another house in Westchester, in the equally fashionable Sutton Manor section of New Rochelle, says city historian Barbara Davis.

The minister arrived at his new Yonkers home in a chauffeured limousine as part of a march of 700 of his followers who enjoyed a massive banquet with 100 varieties of food.

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“The house was called Heaven,” McAfee says. “All his residences were called Heaven. He never really lived here, but his angels did.”

Those angels, with names like Sister Smiling Child, Sister Bright and Love Love Love, lived in the home for several decades. Father Divine’s followers lived by a strict code of ethics, known as the “International Modest Code,” which forbade them to smoke, drink, attend movies or the theater, or use cosmetics or profane language. They were not allowed to accept tips, gifts or bribes or engage in “undue mixing of the sexes.”

The house was nearly demolished in 1992 when the Mormon church wanted to buy the property and erect a much larger building as a place of worship. To save it and keep the property from being developed — “Someone could have plopped 11 houses up here,” McAfee says — the Park Hill Residents’ Association convinced the Yonkers Landmarks Board and City Council to give the house landmark status the following year.

Fortunately for Perlman and Gutekunst, Facey, the current owner, did an enormous amount of exterior and nuts-and-bolts work on the house, including cleaning and restoring all seven fireplaces and adding new copper gutters and downspouts and four new exterior doors.

“He pulled off the aluminum siding and put up cedar clapboard around the whole house,” McAfee says. “He added custom molding around the windows and put in better new windows, and an all new roof.”

Facey installed a whole new heating and cooling system with four-zone heating and three-zone air conditioning. “The house never had central air,” McAfee says. “He did a ton of work — it was a mess.”

He also redid all six bathrooms, “maybe not the way we would have done them,” Perlman says, “but we’re certainly grateful that he did them.”

Throughout the house, you’ll find lots of period architectural details, including built-in window seats and bookcases, original floorboards (pine on the first floor, oak on the second), curved moldings, fireplace tiles, wainscoting, leaded glass windows, oak paneling and tray, coffered and cove ceilings.

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The bedrooms on the second floor have these fantastic curved and deep dormers that extend well into the room. The first-floor music room has gorgeous original curved bay windows that bring in bright, cheery light for most of the day.

“The house is actually in very good condition,” Perlman says. “We went through it with an inspector and there are just a few things that need to be done.” Their priorities are to repaint, add railings for some of the terraces and balconies and replace some of the original fireplace mantels .

“This is clearly a situation where the house could have been lost along the way very easily,” he says. “We’re tremendously grateful that it made its way to us.”

“It’s exciting,” he adds. “We just fell upon this beautiful opportunity — we’re looking at this as our new hobby.”

The way the house looms over the streets below belies its warmth and comfort as soon as you step inside. “It really isn’t that overwhelming,” Perlman says. “It’s a very comfortable house. And that’s the way we view it, as a comfortable place to live in, not as a showpiece.”